Federal Union

Should we send aid to Burma?

2008-05-12T12:26:00.001+01:00

As the tragic consequences for the people of Burma of Cyclone Nargis and its aftermath become clearer, the contrast between the desperate need for humanitarian aid and the unwillingness of the Burmese government to accept it becomes clearer too.

The Americans had to negotiate for a week before a C130 transport aircraft carrying mosquito nets, blankets and water was permitted to fly there. In the meantime, 1.5 million people are homeless and at risk of diseases such as typhoid and cholera, while it is estimated that perhaps 100,000 people have already lost their lives.

The Burmese regime is one of the most secretive and oppressive in the world, having prevented the democratically-elected Aung Sang Suu Kyi from taking her rightful position as head of the government. The military junta now tries to suppress contact and engagement with the outside world unless mediated heavily by itself. It has said it will accept certain types of emergency aid but not the emergency workers who might come with it.

Thoughts are now turning to the suggestion that aid should be dispatched to Burma even without the approval of the government there. National sovereignty should be overridden by the urgent need to provide humanitarian assistance. There is a precedent, of course, in that one of the reasons advanced for the invasion of Iraq was to protect the Iraqi people from the depredations of their government. In fact, many of the people arguing for action in Burma now, such as French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, were advocates of action in Iraq then, so at least they are consistent.

And there is a further precedent, too. Nineteenth century British imperialism in Burma aimed in part to improve the lot of the Burmese people, bringing them the benefits of modern science and medicine, to suppress such diseases as typhoid and cholera. But that was not the only aim, of course, as the British set up an administration to integrate Burma into the empire. What is the guarantee that humanitarian aid this time will not lead to similar imperial consequences?

You can see the dilemma. This blog is firmly not on the side of those who depend on national sovereignty for their arguments, but there have to be limits on what the provision of humanitarian aid will entail and an objective measure of when the task is completed. A unilateral attempt by the Burmese government to tackle the consequences of the cyclone will fail, but so will a unilateral attempt by the French government, too.

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You can make a donation to the Disasters Emergency Committee Burma Cyclone appeal here.

Europe Day, but not in Britain

2008-05-09T17:30:00.003+01:00

Today is Europe Day, the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration that gave birth to the idea of the European Union. It is celebrated across Europe as a recognition of what the EU has achieved. In Poland, there is a parade through the streets of Warsaw; in Bulgaria, there are educational events around the country; and in Turkey, the foreign minister invited the ambassadors of the EU member states and candidate countries to breakfast.

And here in Britain? The Europe minister, Jim Murphy, confirmed last week that “As has been the case in previous years, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London has no events planned to mark Europe Day on 9 May.” How cheering. We go to less effort to celebrate the EU than Turkey does.

On the bright side, I should add that Jim Murphy continued to say that “The FCO's network of missions across Europe do participate in Europe Day events in their host countries, respecting local circumstances” as if that were any comfort. Of course, British diplomats take part in local celebrations, “respecting local circumstances”: it would be downright rude not to. But there is no indication from the government that Europe Day has anything to do with us.

This from a government that wants to encourage more flying of the flags of saints George, Andrew and David on the appropriate days of the year. When it comes to identity and public communication, this government seems to show no interest in the role of Europe.

In previous years, there have in fact been some, although only a few, official celebrations of Europe Day. A visit to the website of the Foreign Office will show that Geoff Hoon gave a speech on Europe Day in 2006 and Denis MacShane hosted a lunch in 2003. (There is also a reference to Europe Day on the 10 Downing Street website, from 2004, which you can read here.)

Some brave local authorities have defied the national trend and marked Europe Day in their own areas. And many European Movement branches have done the same: congratulations to them.

An abuse of the constitution

2008-04-22T11:36:00.001+01:00

An attempt to undermine the parliamentary process is underway today. A court case has been brought by a eurosceptic to overturn the decision of the House of Commons to ratify the Lisbon treaty without recourse to a referendum. Stuart Wheeler claims that his case is directed at the executive on the grounds of “legitimate expectation”: a referendum was promised on the constitutional treaty and one should therefore be held on the Lisbon treaty instead.

However, it is the legislature, not the executive, that has the power to bring the treaty into UK law and also to convene a referendum, and the legislature has decided in favour of the former but against the latter.

Stuart Wheeler did not get the outcome he wanted in parliament, so he is now resorting to extra-parliamentary means to change that decision. It was wrong when the coal miners tried it: it is wrong now.

Not only is it an abuse of the constitution, it is also an abuse of the parliamentary process. He claims to rely on reports from the European Scrutiny and Foreign Affairs committees in the House of Commons. But what did those committees actually say?

The European Scrutiny report, it is true, concluded that “Taken as a whole, the Reform Treaty produces a general framework which is substantially equivalent to the Constitutional Treaty” (para 45), but there is a difference between the general framework and the overall content.

An attempt was made by Bill Cash to insert into the report an explicit statement that “The Reform Treaty, as compared to the Original Constitutional Treaty, requires a referendum of the electorate of the United Kingdom because it is the equivalent to the Constitutional Treaty, even if not the same.” This proposal was rejected by the committee, 7 votes to 3. So the European Scrutiny committee did not, contrary to reports, support the notion that the Lisbon treaty was similar enough to the constitutional treaty as to require a referendum.

The Foreign Affairs committee report, too, concluded “We conclude that there is no material difference between the provisions on foreign affairs in the Constitutional Treaty which the Government made subject to approval in a referendum and those in the Lisbon Treaty on which a referendum is being denied.” (para 29)

But again, an amendment to that report was proposed as follows – “We therefore conclude that the Government should reflect on the fairness of relying on the distinction it draws between the Constitutional Treaty, and the "amending" nature of the Lisbon Treaty, when refusing to submit the latter document to a referendum.” – which was rejected by 8 votes to 2. So the Foreign Affairs Committee cannot be called in support of the pro-referendum case, either.

The Daily Telegraph is happy to suggest that “legitimate expectation” is “a requirement of good administration, by which public bodies ought to deal straightforwardly and consistently with the public”. In which case, perhaps the eurosceptics can start by no longer telling lies about the European Union. They should not demand from others what they are not willing to do themselves.

The rising cost of food

2008-04-21T16:03:00.002+01:00

The rise in food prices around the world is yet another issue that should bring countries together, yet risks driving them apart.

The reasons for the rapid rise in prices are fairly clear. There has been a big increase in demand driven by a rise in population – so there are more mouths to feed – but, not only is the population rising, it is also getting richer which means that people are looking for more exotic and resource-intensive forms of food. Meat, for example, uses up much more grain in production that it replaces in the diet. As the population of China eats more meat, prices of food generally will rise. The consequences of this were described on the blog here.

Then we can add to an increase in demand a fall in supply. Grain is being diverted into the manufacture of biofuels, in the hope of producing carbon-neutral fuel for transport. In fact, biofuels are not that good for the environment, but nevertheless they are still popular and there are substantial programmes dedicated to encouraging their production. This blog ocmmented on biofuels here.

A rise in demand and a fall in supply will lead to higher prices for everyone. Well, not quite everyone. Faced with the prospect that farmers will export more of their production to take advantage of high world prices, some governments have stepped in to impose export bans. Food that is exported is food that cannot be sold on the domestic market, and governments in countries such as China, Indonesia and Kazakhstan are afraid of the possibility of price rises and shortages at home.

Refusing to export grain means that another country is forbidden from importing it. But every country needs to import something. Even it has enough food to eat, it is sure to need oil, or manufactured goods, or tantalum.

So the extension of prohibitions on exports will end up hurting everybody, even if it seems like a short-term solution at the time.

Now, the rise in the price of food is a serious problem and has its roots in some of the fundamental shifts in the global economy, based on demographic and ecological changes. These are factors that will not go away soon. That means that any solution will arise from political action rather than simply from the passage of time, and that political action will need to be coordinated at international level. There is no national solution to the problems of food supply, however much some governments might hope for one.

Ethnic nationalism

2008-04-08T18:16:00.001+01:00

An article in the latest issue of the ever-excellent “Foreign Affairs” suggests that, rather than the European Union representing the defeat of nationalism (as is the conventional way the EU is thought about), it actually represents its triumph. (“Us and Them - The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism”, by Jerry Z Muller, Professor of History at the Catholic University of America.)

You can read the article here, or you can rely on my summary. Essentially, the argument is that the idea of Europe being divided up into countries in each of which almost everybody speaks the same language has become a commonplace – nobody really thinks about it any more – but actually it is quite novel in European (and world) history. For most of history, people have lived in multiethnic empires, so why the change?

Jerry Muller argues that ethnic nationalism is a powerful force because it enables states to become more effective economic and military units, drawing as they can on a common sense of identity. As a result, the multinational empires that dominated world politics have been replaced by nation states: think about the end of the first world war as an example of this.

More striking still, he describes the aftermath of the second world war in the same terms. There was not the same creation of new states as had happened 25 years previously, but there were huge movements of population instead. Millions of Germans, Poles and others moved from their ancestral homes to new locations in the countries named Germany, Poland and so on. The effect was the same: a further step in the division of Europe into states, each of which was ethnically homogeneous. A proximate cause of the second world war was disputes over the status of ethnic minorities, particularly German minorities, all over eastern Europe: at the end of the war, those minorities were removed to Germany.

Once that process was complete, the previous cause of friction between states was removed and peace settled across the continent. The European Union, by this argument, became possible because of the success of ethnic nationalism, rather than being responsible for its defeat.

The experience of the former Yugoslavia, where ethnic nationalism had been suppressed in the name of an invented Yugoslav nationalism, bears this out. The fighting in the 1990s was only settled by the creation of new ethnic states, and the problem of Kosovo will be solved in the same way.

What should a federalist, devoutly an anti-nationalist, make of this argument? Where do we begin?

I think there are two criticisms to make of this argument. First, one cannot speak of the upheavals in Europe during the 20th century that led to the creation of the new ethnic states as though they were merely an impersonal force of nature. No, they were ghastly and bloody wars that could and should have been avoided. Millions of people lost their lives in the wars and the chaos that followed them. This is a continual criticism that federalists make of nationalists: even if the nationalist dream were possible, the cost of creating it is unacceptably high.

The second criticism is that the nationalist dream is not even possible. The peaceful reunification of East and West Germany in 1990 does not represent the victory of German nationalism, but rather its defeat. For a real German nationalism would not have been content with a simple merger of those two predecessor states but would have tried to reclaim territories in Poland, Russia, and elsewhere. But the Germans did not try.

Similarly, Hungary would have raised the question of Transylvania again, lost to Romania in the Trianon treaty of 1920. But the Hungarians did not. Polish and Romanian ethnic nationalism might have succeeded, but German and Hungarian ethnic nationalism has failed.

This is the central point: different nationalisms are fundamentally opposed to each other. To say that, in Europe today, ethnic nationalism has triumphed can only ever be half true.

It is a fact that Europe is today largely divided into countries, in each of which almost everybody speaks the same language, but that is not what has brought peace. What has brought peace is the realisation that national egoism brings war, and that alternative means of resolving disputes are therefore needed instead. In the modern Europe, these things are simply not worth fighting over any more.

Think about the situation of Kosovo. Imagine, in 20 years time, when the people who live in that territory have become citizens of the European Union: how will they be represented in the EU institutions? If Kosovo is independent, there will be Kosovo ministers sitting in the Council of Ministers: were Kosovo to remain part of Serbia, its representatives would instead sit in the Committee of the Regions. Is that difference – between seats in the Council and seats in the Committee – really worth shedding blood for? It is not nationalism that is bringing peace to Europe but federalism.

A president for Europe

2008-04-05T11:38:00.003+01:00

A campaign has been launched to merge the post of president of the European Commission with the new post of president of the European Council created under the Lisbon treaty. The argument is that the Commission president is more legitimate but the European Council president is more powerful. Power can be made legitimate by merging the posts. Read about it here. I write about it on this blog because I don’t agree with it.

(The title of the campaign, Who do I call?, is also odd. Henry Kissinger, when he posed his famous question, was US secretary of state, and the EU will have a single voice - the High Representative, who both represent the Council and be a member of the Commission - once the Lisbon treaty comes into force.)

Reasons why the idea is not a good one. First, the EU is based on the rule of law. There is a strong argument that such a merger is explicitly ruled out in the Lisbon treaty. Article 9b(2) in the treaty defines the membership of the European Council, listing the two presidents of the European Council and European Commission separately. Furthermore, it is specified that members of the Commission “may not engage in any other occupation, whether gainful or not”. That probably kills the idea at the outset.

Secondly, even if the idea is not ruled out by the new treaty, it is certainly not ruled in by it. The idea that the two roles should be filled by the same person was suggested during the European Convention but did not receive general support at that time, and no-one can really say now that this is what the treaty intends. For example, the two posts are appointed differently, they may be dismissed differently, and they even serve different terms of office. (The Commission president has a 5 year renewable term, the European Council president has a 2 1/2 year term, renewable once.) If merger was intended, these points would all be the same.

Let us imagine that, despite these two points, a legal and diplomatic manoeuvre enables the two posts to be merged. Is that how the leadership of the European Union should be settled? By a legal and diplomatic manoeuvre? No, it should be settled in the ballot box. The thought that things can be fixed in Brussels is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

This needs to be said because there is every possibility that the merger of the two posts will have the opposite outcome to that intended. Rather than bestowing on the European Council the legitimacy of the Commission, it might well infect the Commission with the European Council’s distance from the citizen. That would make things worse, not better.

A much better way to make the exercise of political power within the EU more legitimate is to strengthen the connection between the European elections and the choice of president of the Commission. The political parties should nominate candidates in advance of the elections in June 2009. Read more about that here http://www.who-is-your-candidate.eu/

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We wrote about this during the Convention in papers you can read here:

http://www.federalunion.org.uk/europe/fedletter/fl_7.shtml

http://www.federalunion.org.uk/europe/accountablepresident.shtml

In search of clarity

2008-04-05T08:35:00.001+01:00

Two interesting papers have been published by the left of centre think-tank Policy Network as part of its Progressive Governance conference, currently underway in London. The two papers – “Global challenges: accountability and effectiveness” by David Held and “From intervention to cooperation: reforming the IMF and World Bank” by Ngaire Woods – look at different aspects of global governance but do so in a rather roundabout way. They could be more concise and clear, if I am allowed to suggest such a thing, if they took more of an interest in federalism.

David Held, who is co-director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the LSE, looks in his paper at the current state of global governance and highlights a series of problems with it, including the difficulty of defining which issues are domestic and which international, the inertia of the system of international agencies, the absence of a clear division of labour between those agencies, and the lack of accountability of the system as a whole.

Now, any reader of this blog is likely to agree with that analysis. The problem is the definition of the solution.

David Held writes that:

“The story of our increasingly global order is not a singular one. Globalisation is not, and has never been, a one-dimensional phenomenon. While there has been a massive expansion of global markets which has altered the political terrain, the story of globalisation is far from simply economic. Since 1945 there has been a significant entrenchment of universal values concerning the equal dignity and worth of all human beings in international rules and regulations; the reconnection of international law and morality, as sovereignty is no longer merely cast as effective power but increasingly as legitimate authority, defined in terms of the maintenance of human rights and democratic values; the establishment of new forms of governance systems, regional and global (however weak and incomplete); and the growing recognition that the public good—whether conceived as financial stability, environmental protection, or global egalitarianism—requires coordinated multilateral action if it is to be achieved in the long term (Held 2004). These developments need to be, and can be, built upon.”

Now, I think that is a rather long way round to the subject to federalism. Contained within his paragraph are the need to rethink the meaning of sovereignty – to make it an expression of democracy rather than achievement – and to look at how collective action can be taken more effectively. If he were to use the terms and the concepts of federalism, I think he would get to the solution more quickly and more clearly.

Ngaire Woods, professor of international political economy at Oxford University, essentially falls into the same trap. In her paper, she analyses the institutional structures of the IMF and the World Bank to ask why they are not more credible (and thus effective) and what kind of institutional changes would boost their credibility. The argument that they were designed the way they are in order to win the confidence of the Americans at the end of the second world war is a good one, and she seeks to use the same tool – confidence – to engage the wider world in the IMF’s decision-making in the future.

In doing so, though, she persists in the error that was imbedded in the Bretton Woods system at the outset. At the time, in 1944, they thought that, in the IMF, they were building a bank, and so structured it like a bank. Countries paid in funds as though they were shareholders, and acquired votes according to their share capital. Other countries paid in funds because they were paying interest on loans received and therefore did not receive share capital. But the IMF is not a bank, it is an instrument of government. The voting arrangements were rigged at the outset and remain rigged to this day. Yes, that rigging was needed in order to win the confidence of the American government, but it does not make sense to rig the voting system differently now in order to win the confidence of other governments, as long as the voting system basically remains rigged.

To interpret both the institutional needs of globalisation in general, and of the IMF and World Bank in particular, it is necessary to think beyond a world of states into a world of multi-level governance. David Held, to his credit, is doing this, but is making rather harder work of it than he needs to if he neglects the insights and understandings that federalism brings.

Can we be best friends with France?

2008-03-28T11:50:00.001Z

This blog does not normally get excited over state visits, preferring supranational institutions to intergovernmental diplomacy. Institutions are based on rules, so people can be held to the decisions they have taken, as well as making possible some kind of openness and accountability too. The whole point of diplomacy, on the other hand, is that it exists in the absence of rules: it is about persuasion, not compulsion. It’s fine for governments, but not so fine for the parliaments and citizens who want to hold those governments to account.

Relations between member states of the EU are among the most institutionalised in the world, so a state visit from the president of France becomes even less interesting than one by the king of Saudi Arabia, for example. But the outpouring of criticism of France in the press needs some response.

Stephen Glover, in the Daily Mail, seeks to explain why we can never be best friends with France. He prefers the trans-Atlantic partnership with America, but on some very strange grounds. He writes that:

“When, 50 years ago, the British and French governments colluded over Suez, disregarding the United States, they landed flat on their faces.”

Well, they didn’t fall, they were tripped, by none other than the Americans. It was not an accident or an inevitable consequence of geopolitics, but a deliberate act by the Americans to assert their own interests over those of the Europeans.

This was characteristic, for the American republic has never been a friend of the British empire. See the contempt with which they have treated British sovereignty over Diego Garcia, using it as a base for their torture flights even though they knew that the British government forbade this practice.

The Americans were also quite happy to impose economic sanctions on the British steel industry, which were only lifted when the rest of Europe backed Britain in the demand for redress.

Now, whether or not what the Americans were doing was in the best interests of America is a question for another day (although you can probably guess the answer) but it is time for the British to see where their own interest lies, and it is not across the Atlantic at the expense of Europe.

A Universal Right of Address at the UN

2008-03-27T16:22:00.002Z

An interesting proposal arrives for a reform of the UN Security Council, not in terms of who is a member but in terms of who may speak. The “Universal Right of Address” would, according to Independent Diplomat, promoters of the scheme, allow all interested parties to address the Security Council directly: at present, this right is confined to member states of the United Nations.

In his book, “Independent Diplomat: Dispatches from an Unaccountable Elite”, Carne Ross, founder of Independent Diplomat, describes the treatment of the government of Kosovo, denied access to the discussions at the UN in which the future of Kosovo will be settled. He argues that decisions of the Security Council will be better informed if they hear directly from the people involved, and the people involved ought to have the right to a say on their own futures.

The idea of a universal right of address is interesting to federalists as it would amount to a step towards federalism within the United Nations. A characteristic of federalism is that, within a multi-level system of governance, each level has a direct relationship with the citizen. In a confederal system, by contrast, each level relates only to the level below. Federalism is the form of multi-level governance in which citizens have a direct stake.

In that context, recognising that there are entities other than member states within the UN system is a definite step forward. It is an out-of-date and undemocratic fiction that the member state is the last word in world politics.

The United Nations Charter of 1945 opens with the words “We the peoples of the United Nations” but actually means “We the states”. Extending the right of address within the Security Council would be a step towards realising the original terms of that Charter.

As Independent Diplomat puts it:

"When most of the conflict in the twenty-first century is inside rather than between states, it's time for the Security Council to deal with this reality."

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Lessons from five years of war in Iraq

2008-03-25T17:06:00.001Z

Five years on from the unleashing of shock and awe over Baghdad, what have we learned? I’ve written an analysis for the Federal Union news pages, which you can read here, but I am not confident that the right lessons have been properly understood.

The trouble is that different political issues are dealt with separately, rather than seen as being intrinsically connected. It is not possible for any European to come up with a realistic response to what happened in Iraq without thinking in terms of Europe as a whole.

At the time of the war, Tony Blair tried to rally the rest of Europe behind the American policy, while Jacques Chirac tried to gather European support for an alternative policy. Neither succeeded, and we ended up with the worst of all worlds. The Americans duly invaded Iraq as they planned, but without a broad enough coalition to be able to bring order to Iraq once they had kicked the door in.

A common European policy would have been much better, but are we any closer to it?

The Lisbon treaty includes some interesting and useful steps towards a more effective voice in the world – the High Representative and the External Action Service, for example – but it only makes that voice possible rather guaranteeing that it will speak. The decision-making system remains broadly the same: unanimity for policy decisions, with qualified majority voting for implementation.

(As an aside, one might point out that there has been a change in the decision-making system: the requirement used to be unanimity among 12 member states at the time of Maastricht; now it is unanimity among 27, which is likely to be rather harder to obtain.)

The European Convention that produced the first draft of what is now the Lisbon treaty conducted its debates in almost complete ignorance of the crisis that was unfolding in Iraq. (We wrote about it in Federalist Letter to the European Constitutional Convention #8, which you can read here.)

There should have been a fundamental and intimate connection between the two: the whole point of the European Union is to enable Europeans to respond better to collective problems. But the pigeon-holing of European issues as somehow distinct from the rest of politics makes this so much harder to achieve.

Why does our new National Security Strategy not mention asteroids?

2008-03-23T11:12:00.002Z

A writer in the Sunday Telegraph today, commenting on the government’s new National Security Strategy, complains that there is no mention of the threat from asteroids. The likelihood of an asteroid strike is extremely low, but the consequences would be extremely severe, as any dinosaur will tell you. (Read the National Security Strategy here.)

The Americans are working on technologies that might deflect or destroy asteroids on a collision course with Earth, so why aren’t we?

Well, isn’t the answer obvious? It is precisely because the Americans are working on technologies that might deflect or destroy asteroids on a collision course with Earth. Any set of defences of the planet that is good enough will defend all of us. Conceivably we should help the Americans on a coordinated effort, but it would be absurd to try to have a British defence against asteroids. What should we do: try to protect Kent by knocking the asteroids off course into northern France instead?

And that is the real point. The very idea of a National Security Strategy makes little sense in our modern, interdependent times. Anything that is a serious threat to Britain – terrorism, climate change, asteroid strikes – is a serious threat to our neighbours, too. We can only resist such threats by working together with them. A European security strategy or a global security strategy would make rather more sense.

Nothing at the centre

2008-03-17T18:23:00.000Z

A spotter draws my attention to this comment by Tony Blair, made in connection with his new role with the Climate Group attempting to negotiate a new international agreement to fight climate change.

"What I found, whilst still in office as prime minister, was that countries had their own environmental policy. They talked to other nations of course, but there was no centre where it was brought together."

Read the whole report here and you can read more about the Blair initiative here.

Well, isn’t that half of the federalist case? That political decisions will only be taken when there are political institutions capable of doing so. And, in the case of climate change, those institutions don’t yet exist.

The other half of the federalist case is that those political decisions should be taken in an open and democratic manner, rather than as the result, say, of a freelance politician supported by an NGO engaging in private talks with government leaders out of sight of the voting public. Still, we can’t have everything, and no-one ever said that federalism was a question of all or nothing.

Where does Britishness come from?

2008-03-14T16:23:00.001Z

Interesting comment here by Charles Moore on how Britishness is “artificial” (and he means it “as a compliment”):

"It may be that the government’s plan for oaths of allegiance for 18-year-olds in schools won’t work, but I am suspicious of the argument that it is ‘unBritish’ to make a song and dance about Britishness. In fact, a song and dance could be literally, and exactly, what are needed. Being essentially a political rather than an ethnic idea, Britishness is an artificial creation (and I mean that as a compliment). It was the careful work of leaders, thinkers, writers and artists for about 200 years. The concept helped forge a nation out of several once-warring components. It was so successful that it was taken for granted and then, partly out of left-wing ideology and partly by mistake, began to decline. Now that indigenous pupils know almost nothing about our history and our hundreds of thousands of immigrants have a very weak idea of the country of which they are becoming a part, it is complacent to say that special ceremonies are vulgar and unnecessary. We do desperately need to invent rites which help us understand who we are. It is a secular form of confirmation."

I am used to hearing from Eurosceptics that national feeling is somehow innate and immutable and that attempts to create European democracy will always fail, even if the theory is beautiful, because there is not and can never be a European demos.

I often quote Michael Portillo in this context (from a pamphlet he wrote for the IEA in 1998, “Democratic values and the currency”)

“Democracy requires not only the cracy but also the demos, not only the state but also the people. You can create the apparatus of a state at European level, with a common frontier, a single immigration policy, a common foreign and defence policy, and a single currency. All the attributes of the nation state, all its functions, can be transferred to the European level along the Monnet- functionalist model. But what we do not have and what we cannot conjure up is a demos – that is, a single European people.”

Michael Portillo’s argument is essentially that human history, at least in Europe, has come to a halt. Whatever the factors used to be that brought about changes in our system of government no longer apply. It is good to see that Charles Moore, in arguing that the form and nature of our political communities can still be changed, disagrees.

Mandelson vs Hewitt

2008-03-13T11:58:00.001Z

This blog discusses issues rather than personalities (Tony Benn would approve) so don’t be misled by the title. Discussion has started about who will be the member of the European Commission from Britain after 2009. Peter Mandelson, the incumbent, was appointed by Tony Blair when he was prime minister but has to contend now with Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown.

Messrs Mandelson and Brown famously fell out over the Labour leadership contest in 1994 and by all accounts cannot stand each other now. (Peter Mandelson’s contribution to the Blair leadership campaign was covered by a codename, “Bobby”.) The idea that Brown would offer to extend Mandelson’s appointment for another five years is therefore greeted with some astonishment amongst the Westminster press. The story in fact started circulating that Patricia Hewitt, another Blair loyalist and former cabinet minister who left the cabinet when Brown took over, would be nominated in Mandelson’s place.

This story has been discussed entirely in terms of personalities: who Gordon Brown does and doesn’t like. But from the point of view of this blog, that’s hopeless. The acquisition of political office – and that’s what being a member of the European Commission means – should come from the ballot box, not from attending the right cocktail parties.

The Lisbon treaty, of course, takes a big step in this direction. The choice of president of the Commission will be made “taking into account the elections to the European Parliament” (article 9D(7)) and the other members of the Commission shall be nominated by the member states “by common accord with the President-elect” (also from article 9D(7)), so it is not necessarily up to Gordon Brown to renominate Peter Mandelson or replace him with Patricia Hewitt, even if that is what he wanted to do. The voters, at long last, get a say. That’s an issue.

What unanimity means

2008-03-12T12:07:00.001Z

EUobserver reports a new threat to the ratification of the Lisbon treaty, arising from the Aaland islands. An autonomous part of Finland, the Aaland government is apparently demanding the same right that Sweden already has to sell snuff. Snuff is banned throughout the EU for public health reasons, but Sweden insisted on an exemption as part of its accession to the EU in 1994. Now the Aaland islands want to follow suit, and are apparently threatening to torpedo the treaty in order to get what they want.

But what has snuff got to do with the changes made by the Lisbon treaty to the institutional arrangements of the European Union?

The answer is nothing at all, except that a revision of those arrangements gives the opportunity for all kinds of other issues to be thrown into the pot at the same time. And, if someone else wants to do it, they are entitled to do so, just as we reserve the right to do so ourselves.

This is what unanimity means. Any decision, on anything, can be overturned art any time. Even if the issue at stake would normally be dealt with by Qualified Majority Voting, it can be attached to some other issue that is decided by unanimity.

Substantial changes were made to the Common Fisheries Policy in order to secure Spanish agreement to the Scandinavian enlargement in 1994. John Major tried to link all kinds of issues to the ban on exports of British beef during his famous “beef war” in 1996. These linkages are common, and are one of the reasons why the legislative process in the EU is complicated and obscure. A more transparent way of making and amending legislative proposals would expose these linkages to the light and probably reduce how many there are.

But if member states want to be bloody-minded, there is nothing, save a sense of shame, that can stop them.

Exactly what it says on the tin

2008-03-07T20:07:00.002Z

I know it doesn’t help much to rake over Wednesday’s debate in the House of Commons on whether to have a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, but I can’t resist it anyway. In particular, I want to quote from the speech by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith. It sums up everything that was wrong about the whole approach taken on all sides.

Mr. Duncan Smith: “In the referendum that my hon. Friend mentions, I voted to go into the EEC. I do not resile from that; I was right to vote for what I did. I voted to go into a marketplace, and to share certain functions to create that marketplace, but we have gone a lot further than that. The problem is that there is dishonesty in saying, “You all knew about this when you first joined. You all knew, for example, about the supremacy of European law.” That is nonsense. People who say that know very well that they did not think about that issue when they voted on whether to join. That is the real reason why it is time to have a referendum on the treaty: it will allow us to tease out the fact that if we keep going down the road that we are taking, without making any change, things will go wrong.”

If ever proof was needed that a referendum is not a miracle cure that some MPs were suggesting, here it is.

First, Iain Duncan Smith didn’t know what he was voting for in 1975. He was broadly speaking against the supremacy of European law, but voted for it nevertheless, not understanding what was at stake. (His refusal to regret the way he voted is a peculiar mixture of honour and stubbornness.) If Iain Duncan Smith, a future leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, can be uninformed about this, who else might have been? I refer you to what Edward Heath said at the time, to demonstrate that it was possible to have been properly informed. Lord Denning, in his famous comments comparing European law with the incoming tide, certainly understood what was up.

So, a referendum throws the decision into the hands of people who may not understand fully what is at stake. (This is not to criticise anybody, or even to argue against referendums, merely to note the difficulty of holding referendums.)

Secondly, note the fact that IDS wanted a referendum now on the supremacy of European law, despite the fact that this principle is left unchanged by the Lisbon treaty. To hold a referendum on this principle means to have a referendum on EU membership as a whole, not on the latest reform package. Again, that is a perfectly reasonable proposal to make, but what’s at stake in the vote ought to be set out clearly on the ballot paper.

We have all heard of the wood stain that does exactly what it says on the tin. The only acceptable referendum would be one that that says on the tin what it does. That wasn’t what was on offer on Wednesday night.

¤ ¤ ¤

You can read the whole transcript of the debate in the House of Commons here.

You might also like to read a report on a parallel debate held by Intelligence Squared that evening on the same subject – the result might surprise you.

On another planet

2008-03-04T23:39:00.001Z

Interesting talk from Professor Tim Lang this evening on food security. (Read him on the Quotebank here.) He was spelling out the state of the world’s food supply and suggesting a few of the things that need to be done. A number of the points he raised were outside the scope of this blog, but there was enough about the seductive delusion of nationalism to set me thinking.

A compelling analysis looks at how much land it takes to feed each of us, according to the types of food we eat. Beef takes up more land than pork to produce the same amount of food energy, for example, and wheat takes up more than potatoes, so you can measure the land area represented by the contents of your basket in the supermarket. And if you do measure the land area in the overall British shopping basket, you find that we are taking up so much land that, if everyone else around the world did the same, we would need five more planets the size of our own to grow all the food we are eating. Tim Lang called this “six planet living”.

One of the attractions of this form of analysis is that it does not look at what we grow here in this country but what we eat. That is the definition that really matters. One of the problems of the discussion about climate change is that Britain can claim the “credit” for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions because many of the goods we buy are now imported rather than made at home. Consumption patterns haven’t changed: we have merely exported our pollution. For those wedded to the national way of thinking, it may make some kind of sense, but actually it is the way to avoid dealing with the problem properly.

Now, whatever you think about food in general and environmental policy in particular, the six planet figure means that the British diet is only possible because most other people do not eat it. Thinking about the reputation of British cooking, maybe that is a good thing, but as a serious point, many people do not have enough to eat and actually cannot have enough to eat as long as things go on as they are.

So, what should change? Some people argue that the solution lies in the exploitation of technology to the full, to reduce the land area required. Others argue that we should eat different food and change our diet, which principally means eating less meat. This blog isn’t the place for that discussion, but there is something more to remark here. It is not enough to address food production and consumption without also addressing the framework for political decisions, too.

For one of the likely consequences of any new food policy is going to be changes to the way that we ourselves live. That’s not to say it is good or bad, merely that it is a fact. But can people be asked to make these changes without the confidence that they will make a difference? To be sure that they will indeed make a difference requires a means of delivering change in countries other than our own. A purely national way of thinking will not allow this. Tim Lang talked explicitly, if only briefly, about multi-level governance as a factor in solving the problem of food supply, but that is still a controversial idea in Britain. Although anyone who thinks that the UK can secure its own food supply on its own is truly living, if I can use the metaphor, on another planet.

Should there be a referendum on Europe and, if so, on what question?

2008-03-02T20:35:00.003Z

The House of Commons will be debating this week the call for a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. There are two questions at stake, even if the Speaker in his wisdom will only allow one of them to be put to the vote.

The first is whether or not to hold a referendum on Europe at all: the second is, if so, what the question should be. The Speaker has already ruled on the answer to the second question – the Lisbon treaty and not EU membership – so only the first one is to be decided on Wednesday. This is a pity, because the second question is actually more significant.

On the first point, the British constitutional doctrine is that European treaties are ratified in parliament and not by referendum. Neither the Single European Act nor any of its successors was put to a referendum, under either Conservative or Labour government.

Now, one might argue that the British constitutional doctrine that was changed by the announcement by Tony Blair in April 2004 of a referendum on the constitutional treaty. Many other constitutional changes introduced by Labour since 1997, such as devolution to Scotland, Wales and the north east of England, and the creation of elected mayors, have been put to referendums, so in that tradition a referendum on a European treaty might fit in. But other recent constitutional changes, such as the changes to the House of Lords, have been decided by parliament alone, so we have not definitively moved to the Irish position where all constitutional changes have to be approved by referendums.

The position is complicated by the evident fact that the decision to hold a referendum on the constitutional treaty was not taken on constitutional grounds anyway. It enabled Labour to remove one of the possible negative factors it faced in the European elections of June 2004: the decision was a political one, not a constitutional one. Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time, has said since that the reason was “because of the extent of the clamour”.

The Conservatives argue that the obligation to hold a referendum is political: the 2005 general election manifestos of the three main parties contained commitments to a referendum on the constitutional treaty and the Lisbon treaty is sufficiently close in content to the constitutional treaty for those manifesto commitments still to apply. Labour and the Liberal Democrats dispute this, arguing that the differences between the two treaties are more important than the similarities. This is a political question, which by its nature is never going to have a definitive answer.

But, even though there are some interesting things to say about referendums in general, the second question – about the Lisbon treaty in particular – is more important.

There are two options on the table, a referendum on the Lisbon treaty alone and a referendum on EU membership as a whole, but the two are not so different, for reasons I shall explain.

First, let us imagine that the referendum on the Lisbon treaty rejects it – this is the only case where the subsequent outcome is unclear. What happens next? A treaty can only come into force if it is approved by all member states, which implies that the Lisbon treaty would be stopped in its tracks. However, after each previous referendum rejection, further negotiations have followed to fix whatever problem the No voters had identified. (The Lisbon treaty is intended to be the fix to the problems the French and Dutch saw in the constitutional treaty.) This time, new discussions would be opened to deal with the problems the British saw in the treaty. How could the difficulty be overcome?

This is where we have to look at what the grounds for opposition to the Lisbon treaty actually are. What we find when we look at what the opponents to the treaty have said is that their opposition goes far beyond the wording of the treaty itself.

They object variously to such things as the development of European cooperation on foreign policy and defence, the primacy of European law, the regulation of the single market, and the growing powers of the European Parliament. But these are not features of the Lisbon treaty, they are characteristics of the European Union as a whole.

European foreign policy cooperated started as far back as 1970, the primacy of European law was implicit in the Treaty of Rome of 1957 and made explicit by a European Court ruling in 1964, the single market was launched by the Single European Act in 1986, and the European Parliament became directly elected in 1979. It would take much more than simply unpicking the Lisbon treaty to deal with these concerns.

Furthermore, these points are not mere characteristics of the European Union but absolutely fundamental to it. The reason why it works is because European law has primacy over national law; the reason why it is democratic is because the European Parliament is becoming more powerful. To remove these features would be to change the EU in the most far-reaching way imaginable. The other 26 member states have joined it precisely because it has these characteristics: they will surely not give up on them happily now.

In that light, what outcome can possibly follow a British No vote to the Lisbon treaty? It is inconceivable that these objections could find satisfactory resolution within anything resembling membership of the EU as it is today. Unless the other 26 member states are willing to rip up 50 years of history (with which, remember, they are actually rather satisfied), a British No to the Lisbon treaty will surely lead to Britain’s departure from the European Union.

Now, if that is really the issue at stake in a referendum, the question on the ballot paper ought to say so. Proponents of a referendum on the Lisbon treaty ought to face up to the consequences of what they are proposing: for some of them, perhaps, that is what they really mean.

Voluntary cooperation

2008-02-28T12:19:00.000Z

The fact that the Lisbon treaty is currently going through parliament has given Eurosceptics a new opportunity to object to the fact that the EU is based on supranational institutions and the rule of law. They say that they would prefer “voluntary cooperation” instead.

But at the heart of the case for federalism is the recognition that voluntary cooperation between sovereign entities is not enough. It might work from time to time, but it does not work reliably. That is the whole point of the rule of law: it compels people (or countries) to do things they might not otherwise choose to do in the wider longer-term interest of everyone.

An interesting note by Open Europe on the foreign policy aspects of the Lisbon treaty illustrates this issue perfectly. (Read it here.) They note that “The debate about what kind of foreign policy the EU should have is a good example of the difference between an EU of voluntary cooperation and one that tries to create artificial consensus by majority voting.”

And they seek to discuss this question using a real-life example:

“To give a very topical example, a number of EU states remain vehemently opposed to EU recognition of Kosovo’s independence, mindful of the effect this would have on their own domestic separatist movements. Does the fact these Member States are in a minority invalidate their right to pursue a policy they see as integral to their national interest?”

The answer right now is no. The EU takes major foreign policy decisions – for example, on Kosovo – by unanimity: there is no unanimity on this question so there is no decision. (This position remains the case under the Lisbon treaty, by the way.)

But saying that it is up to each country to decide for itself whether or not to recognise the independence of Kosovo does not solve the fundamental problem. Not only is it integral to the Spanish national interest that Spain does not recognise Kosovan independence (to take a hypothetical example), it is integral to the Spanish national interest that France and Germany do not recognise Kosovan independence either, if the Spanish are concerned that Kosovan independence might start to give the Catalans and the Basques ideas.

But a system of foreign policy decision-making founded on the notion of case-by-case voluntary cooperation will never give the Spanish what they need. They need a means of policy-making that gives them an influence over the decisions that affect them: isn’t that what democracy means?

Better would be the collective recognition that, in the end, European countries have got interests in common around the world and that they have to work together to protect them. The interests of the different countries are not always identical, which means that compromises will have to be made and that no country can always have everything its own way, but nevertheless there is enough in common between the different countries to make a common system preferable.

The whole development of the EU’s foreign policy system, since the creation of European Political Cooperation, has been founded on this idea, tempered by the realisation that it represents a profound change to the way in which countries have been used to operating and therefore cannot be introduced quickly.

The question that remains to be asked is whether the consensus that arises out of the European decision-making system is “artificial”. The answer is surely no, because the different European countries genuinely do have interests in common.

The Open Europe note on European foreign policy anticipates this point and goes on to list a series of issues where they say the European response is inadequate. The response to such a list is to say that European foreign policy is still a work in progress, but founded on the conviction that European countries will have a stronger voice in the world together than they will apart. In foreign policy as in everything else, the EU does not create common interests: it is the recognition of common interests that already exist.

The retention of the veto

2008-02-26T23:39:00.001Z

A rather clumsy statement in the House of Commons today by Gisela Stuart, opponent of the Lisbon treaty, on the subject of the location of the European Parliament. It is well-known that the EP moves between Brussels and Strasbourg every month, and almost as well-known that it is a ridiculous state of affairs. This flying circus costs the taxpayer some 200 million euros a year.

Why does it continue? Well, because the requirement for the EP to hold a certain number of plenary sessions each year is was written into the Maastricht treaty on the initiative of the French government and has not been removed since. To remove it would require unanimity – that’s what treaty amendments require – and a French government that gave up parliamentary sessions in Strasbourg would demand something rather substantial in return. As it is, the other member states might regret the monthly voyage to Strasbourg but it costs them less than whatever else the French might want instead. So the system remains.

Gisela Stuart today suggested that the decision on the seat of the EP should be made by qualified majority voting and not by unanimity. That’s fine, except that she is in general a critic of the moves towards QMV in the treaty. Britain is losing influence as a result, she says. But France would lose influence as a direct result of something she is proposing.

Now, it is fair enough to argue that Britain should be seeking score points in Europe and gain influence at the expense of France, as long as one does not also pretend to argue for the pro-European case overall. That’s what anti-Europeans do.

The case for Europe, on the other hand, has got to be won in every country, including France, and a pro-European case that is based on the explicit removal of French rights is not going to be very credible.

To argue for QMV on the seat of the European Parliament as part of an overall package of moves towards QMV in general would be different, but that’s not Gisela Stuart’s position. She gives get another example of the confusion that besets opponents of the Community method. The stubborn retention of EP sessions in Strasbourg is the consequence of an absence of QMV and Britain’s interest is harmed as a result. When will the Eurosceptics learn?

Exposed by the call for a referendum

2008-02-26T11:55:00.002Z

The squirming of the Eurosceptics in the face of the Liberal Democrat call for a referendum on EU membership tells us a lot about them.

The Liberal Democrats themselves, having fought the last general election on a platform of a referendum on the then constitutional treaty, do not support the idea of a referendum on the Lisbon treaty – it is sufficiently different from the previous constitutional treaty to release them from their manifesto commitment – but nevertheless want a referendum on Europe. They say it will enable the issue of Europe to be settled in British politics, and it will also enable their MPs to say to their constituents that they offered the voters a direct say on Europe.

Nigel Farage MEP, leader of the UK Independence Party, has absurdly denounced this move. He says it is "nothing but a smokescreen". He went on:

"Whilst in the long term I agree that this is the referendum we want, calling for it at this time is only to cover up their weasel-like position over a referendum.”

What has the long term got to do with it? It is not UKIP policy to withdraw from the EU in the long term, it is UKIP policy to withdraw from the EU as soon as possible. The fact is that there is little public support for leaving the EU and Nigel Farage knows it: he would rather have a referendum on the Lisbon treaty because he thinks there is more change of winning that one, which he knows would then be tantamount to a No vote on membership as a whole.

Neil O’Brien, director of Open Europe, agrees. He writes in the Guardian that “Most people in Britain don't want to see further centralisation of power in the EU - but at the same time they want to reform the EU, not leave it.”

The call to reform the EU is not limited to Britain: it is shared by the rest of the EU, too. And that is what the Lisbon treaty is for. It will increase the democratic accountability of the EU institutions and make the EU more effective at implementing agreed policies, without adding substantially to the range of policies that can be made.

If the British people do not accept these reforms, what else are they to do? These reforms have not come from nowhere – they have been under discussion for six years since the Laeken Declaration of December 2001 – and are not going to be rewritten substantially now. If the British, having taken part in the negotiations and signed up to these reforms so far, now change their mind, they are not going to change the mind of the rest of Europe with them.

Neil O’Brien is offering a false choice if he suggests that, between ratifying the treaty and leaving the EU, there is a third option. It doesn’t exist.

He himself objects, in his article on the Guardian website, that “Only offering people a polarising "in or out" referendum would be a dishonest attempt to push people into positions they don't hold.”

Actually, it would be a referendum on the Lisbon treaty rather than membership that would be the dishonest step, pretending that the British can both have their cake and eat it. The truth is that Neil O’Brien objects to the EU more that he is willing to say: it is the objection that dare not speak its name.

European guilt

2008-02-24T19:16:00.002Z

I was at a talk today about the history of the state of Israel – this year marks 60 years since it was founded – and I asked about the relationship between Israel and Europe. We hear a lot about the connection between Israel and America, but what about Europe (which is rather nearer, after all). The speaker, Colin Shindler, had something interesting to say on the subject, namely that the Europeans had been hampered by, on the one hand, their guilt about the Holocaust, and on the other by their more extensive commercial links with the Arab countries. It has made for some difficult and sometimes diffident policy-making. It is an area where I am convinced that Europe can and should do more.

On the question of Holocaust guilt, though, this is something that runs through the whole idea of Europe itself. It is no accident that the determination to eradicate the threat of war from our continent came hard on the heels of the realisation of war had really meant. Commissioner Margot Wallström spoke about this in Terezin three years ago (read about it on this website here and here) and she was right.

The issue emerged recently in the European Parliament in an outburst by Conservative MEP Dan Hannan. (Readers will recognise him as a regular on this blog, but he has surpassed himself this time.) He denounced the president of the EP, Hans-Gert Pöttering, by comparing him with the Nazis, and has been thrown out of the Christian Democrat group as a result.

But a bit of background first. Dan Hannan opposes the Lisbon treaty and supports a referendum on the treaty in an attempt to prevent it from being ratified and coming into force.

He is attempting to obstruct the conduct of business in the democratically-elected European Parliament in support of his campaign, namely to prevent the passage into law of a measure treaty that is supported by all 27 member state governments but which he happens to oppose. Is it really correct that the daily practice of democracy should be taken hostage in this way by someone who has lost the vote?

If his argument is based on the similarities between the Lisbon treaty and the previous constitutional treaty, and the argument that the similarity between the two is so great as to indicate that the same ratification procedures should be followed for both, he will find that most countries did not require a referendum even on the constitutional treaty in 2004. His argument is therefore not that the previous ratification method should be used, but actually that a wholly new ratification method should be invented, overriding the constitutional provisions of the different member states, in order to give him the policy outcome that he prefers. And he is willing to disrupt the conduct of business of a democratically-elected parliament in pursuit of his attempt to overturn the constitutional provisions of 26 countries, 25 of which he is not a citizen. (The Irish constitution requires a referendum.)

If that makes his behaviour sound reprehensible, I am glad, because it is meant to.

To add to that behaviour such a gratuitous insult towards the president of the European Parliament was asking for trouble. His complaint was that Mr Pöttering wanted powers that would enable him to prevent the disruption – powers equivalent to those which are freely exercised by the speaker of the House of Commons, one might add – and that this was redolent of the Nazi treatment of the Reichstag. European guilt about the Holocaust was a major motivation for creating the European Union in the first place, and so misplaced allegations like this are not only insulting but also profoundly absurd. The European Union holds its member states to a system of democracy and human rights to make sure that what happened in the 1930s and 40s is never repeated.

The clear function of the European Union to prevent a recurrence of genocide in Europe adds to the sensitivity of the issue. Dan Hannan in his blog (which you can read here) notes that he was not the only person in the chamber to refer to the Nazis, but he is utterly wrong if he supposes that his attempt to disrupt parliamentary procedure and the actions of people to defend it can somehow be treated equally.

Independence for Kosovo

2008-02-22T17:25:00.001Z

The province of Kosovo emerged from its chrysalis last week as a new state, separate from Serbia of which it was part for so long. It is not yet a beautiful butterfly – in fact it barely has wings – so what happens next?

The news media has been full of discussion about whether Kosovo will get to take up a seat at the United Nations, and what its flag looks like, and things like that. These are the kind of things that states do, and Kosovo should do them too.

More interesting to me are the following:

(1) Does it set a precedent? The opposition to the Kosovar move by countries such as Spain and Sri Lanka suggests that it does. They too have secessionist provinces, and they are afraid that the Kosovo example, if it goes well, might be an inspiration to others. On the other hand, every country and every territory is different, so maybe it doesn’t set a precedent. Furthermore, there have been other secessions before, so maybe the precedent is already set. And thirdly, why can’t the people of Kosovo do what they think is best for them? Why must they be forced to do what is best for Spain? And lastly, why should what is best for Spain be rated more highly than what is best for Catalonia? (Please note, I am not suggesting that Catalonia should secede, merely floating the issues.)

(2) What does it do for minorities? Up until last Sunday, the people of Kosovo were a 1.9 million Albanian minority in a country (Serbia) with a population of about 10 million. They were a minority, but are no longer. However, there is a Serbian population in Kosovo which was part of a majority community and now forms a 100,000 strong minority in a country with a population of 2 million. The minority problem is not ended, merely dumped on someone else. Every time a new line is drawn on a map, a new set of minorities is created. Line-drawing is a rather unprofitable activity, all things considered.

(3) What happens next? The only stable solution in the long-term is for both Serbia and Kosovo to become members of the European Union, in the same way that Belgium and the Netherlands are EU member states. OK, either Serbia or Kosovo might choose not to, but each must have the opportunity to make that choice. In discussing whether the secession was the right thing to do, and/or whether the independent Kosovo should be recognised (which amounts to the same question), the judgement is whether it has made the accession of Serbia and Kosovo together easier or harder. I suspect it has made it harder, but I hope I am wrong.

President Blair?

2008-02-09T15:54:00.000Z

The news is full at the moment of speculation about whether Tony Blair might be a suitable candidate to be president of the European Council. The post doesn’t exist yet, but will be created by the Lisbon treaty, and thoughts are racing ahead.

This blog wrote about the possibility two months ago – read it here – so it is welcome if the mainstream media can catch up now.

Blair himself is reported to have said that he would only be interested in the post if it were given some powers. As it stands, according to the treaty, that is a hope that will not be fulfilled. But, as with pretty much any senior job in any organisation, political, government or otherwise, much rests on what the post-holder makes of the job, not only on what it says on paper. Authority and influence are not allocated solely by treaty but also by action. A president who acts in the right way will exercise more power than a president who does not. The question, then, is whether Tony Blair can act in that way.

Here, opinions differ. You will no doubt have your own, but let me point you to two others.

First, read Peter Sain ley Berry in EUobserver yesterday: http://euobserver.com/9/25625

Next, there is a further argument here, by Sir Samuel Brittan, reflecting on Blair’s conduct of the business of government. His interest in “what works”, regardless of how it works, was the source of much of his success and also of much of his failure.

The European Union itself is founded on the rule of law, and a profound understanding that “what works” depends utterly on how it works. There might be some short-cuts that work in the short-term, but a long-term objective of peace and prosperity needs more solid foundations than that. It can be frustrating sometimes, but a constant reminder of this point is needed. Is Tony Blair the man to provide it?

William Hague’s problem

2008-02-07T22:05:00.000Z

A speech on Europe today by Conservative shadow foreign secretary William Hague – you can read it here.

His speech in the House of Commons at the opening of the ratification debase for the Lisbon Treaty was very good – you can read it here, (about half-way down the page), or watch the best bit of it here – but that was because he could be simply critical and party political. Ask him to be positive – what is he for, not what is he against – and things become a bit more mysterious.

In his speech today, he repeated the objections to the Lisbon treaty with which we are familiar by now, but the absence of a concrete alternative undermines his case.

Rejecting the treaty, he says, “would … be an opportunity for Europe to think again, put institutional questions to one side and get on with the work our voters want us to focus on.” Would it?

We would be stuck with the institutions of the Nice treaty. Michael Howard, when he was Conservative leader, said that the treaty “purports to lay the ground for enlargement but fails to do so”. The Conservative manifesto in 2004 said that rejection of the constitutional treaty would force Europe “to confront its failings”. Yet now, William Hague says that institutional questions should be put to one side. Have the Conservatives changed their mind about the Nice treaty?

The current treaty has been six years in the making: the current phase of institutional reform was kicked off by the Laeken declaration in December 2001. Abandoning it now would either leave us with the Nice treaty – which the Tories always opposed – or would reopen all the various discussions we have lived through in recent years.

William Hague claims that he wants to “free Europe's leaders from the prospect of Eurocratic turf wars to deal with the real challenges Europe faces today.” But his policy would actually lead to more institutional discussion, not less.